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Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine- ‘remind us to complete this post tomorrow!’

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

They don’t call it RePrint Monday for nothin’

But wait! Wait!

Once again validating the RePrint approach to self-prompting for topics of post, see that photo above?

That was the image we used on the post we could not find this morning. (And still cannot, which means we’ll have to recreate it in the small amount of pre-dawn time left.)

So, it may have been before the concept of ‘the Everything Rule’ coalesced or, it might have been just afterwards, but we described, by way of illustration (and therefore, explanation) a scene:

a clark, a scott and a roger stand on the sidewalk directly across from a very popular restaurant at noon. On a Thursday. (Or Friday. Any day, except for Monday. Or Wednesday.) In any event, there is a line out the door and up the sidewalk.

In keeping with one of the stated goals/benefits of an understanding of the principles of the Wakefield Doctrine, what is it the three are seeing. More to our point, what are they  experiencing?

Take your time. If you run out of space, raise your hand and a proctor will provide you with an additional blue essay book.

Begin:

Monday -the Wakefield Doctrine- “… of development, writers clubs and understanding the world around us.”

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Do we outgrow the past or do we simply forget? Do the improvements, growth and developments we achieve (through effort, ambition and circumstance) become like, well, the way it is.

We admit to a fondness for the occasional peculiar word or phrases that, although uncommon in everyday conversation, are fun. Today (in light of the opening sentences) the fun word/phrase/expression is raison dêtre. (which our friends at wikipedia define as  “…a French expression commonly used in English, meaning “reason for being” or “reason to be”.”)

The Wakefield Doctrine is the reason for the existence of this blog. All, and only, because it hit me one night that it would be good to ‘formalize’ my personal system for explaining the world and the people in it.

The Wakefield Doctrine holds that we are, all of us, born with the potential to experience the world as one of three characteristic realities. At an early age we ‘pick’ one of these three ‘worldviews’ and we are on our way to becoming clarks, scotts or rogers. The Wakefield Doctrine, as a personality ‘theory’, is not concerned with how you would describe yourself, the results of questionnaires created to identify traits and interests or even what you think that girl is doing sitting out there in the middle of the field looking back towards the house filled with people she may or may not be related to (well, sometimes we enjoy the traditional approaches; I mean, damn! give yourself away in one description much, clark? lol). Unlike other tools developed by psychology, sociology and phrenology, tools easily transposed to popular media such as ‘the Face Book’ where they lie, attractively packaged, club-shaped mirrors waiting for someone to notice, “Oh, honey! Come here! I found this personality test in my magazine and it so has you down to a T! Lets take it together. You first.”

Central to the hypothesis of the Wakefield Doctrine is the notion that we all live in a reality that is, to a certain degree, personal. Nothing weird, mystical or magical. Simply that if you and I are standing in front of the entrance to, say, a very popular restaurant, our experience of that moment will not be identical. The Doctrine takes this and jumps up above the individual and says, ‘Suppose the world was one in which individuals are separated from each other in a way not easily discernible or, better still, imagine that the life we wake up into after each sleep is that of the Predator, simple and direct, eat or be eaten; or suppose everything in the world is knowable and, to a degree established in a way that allows for complete agreement among like-minded people, that the universe is, in fact, definable and quantifiable.’

This is key to understanding the Doctrine. Children (you, me and the girl behind the counter asking if that’ll be Regular or Premium) all grow and develop (their) personalities in order to successfully interact with the environment that surrounds them. Social, physical, the whole thing. And this is done in the context of the nature and character of the world, as they experience it. These strategies evolve and develop into the style we refer to as our ‘personality type’.

I grew up in the world of the Outsider (clark). I developed a way of relating to the people and the world around me that permits me to stay out of the limelight (can’t have people pointing at me and telling everyone that we don’t belong) while at the same time giving me the tools and the drive to search for whatever it was that I didn’t learn when I was too young to realize it i.e. how to be a real person.

A friend of mine grew up in the reality of the Predator (scott). She’s a lot of fun to be around, gets more done in a morning than most people do in a week. She is always on alert, never is not paying attention to whats going on around her and everyone likes her…except for the ones who are terrified of her. Temperament is often un-fairly pronounced with the accent entirely on the first syllable… we prefer the word: mercurial. You want something done right away, you ask her and step out-of-the-way.

If you want that thing done right… you find my friend who grew up in the life of the Herd Member (roger). He will know how to do it so that the joints line up, the glue doesn’t stick out at the ends and it stays the way it’s supposed to be… forever. He knows the simple fact of the life that there’s a Right Way.  No, nothing as an alternative, no second-runner-up. One way. Fortunately, my friend has so many other people around him that grew up knowing that they all belong. Sure there’s minor disagreements over decor, but it’s all one big hap…. Herd. The world is good. Just have to understand.

OK enough for a Monday morning.

 

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Frides of Arch -the Wakefield Doctrine-

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clark, scotts and rogers)

Detail of the painting “God reprimanding Adam and Eve”, by F. Zampieri (1625)

 

Yeah, you are correct. You have scene the image above before. In one of our Unicorn Challenge posts. Superstition is the religion of the desperately unimaginative.

That being said, you do know what Friday means: ‘the Unicorn Challenge‘., do you not?  It is the day-of-the-week when jenne and ceayr go all ‘June and Ward Cleaver’ on the blogosphere and invite a small group of talented writers to get al TAT on the photo below.

Anyway. Two Hundred fifty words is what they allow us to write a story keying off the photo below.

Yeah? Well, no matter what that old saying, choice is curse of the Garden.

The man stood on the rock. The wind was calm, the sea was flat. The sky was a uniform, overcast grey; so much so, there was no horizon. Anywhere. In any direction, except landwards. The man had zero interest in that direction.

When there is no horizon, only gravity can provide direction. Taking the hint from this most fundamental of forces, the man looked down. Without a bright sun overhead, jealously casting reflections on anything it felt threatened by, he could see to the bottom. Like most of his world this particular morning, it consisted of unexceptional variations on the shade of grey. The exception to this almost blankscape were three red stars.

A phrase from a proverb, long favored by nuns charged with instilling the moral guilt demanded by Mother Church of it’s youngest, came, quite unbidden, “Well I made a difference to that one’.

The man laughed and nearly lost his balance. He noticed his rock pedestal was smaller. Time and Tide, he mused, time and tide.

Feeling his resolve recede, he glanced over the increasing gap between his stand and dry land. Let go, he thought.

On the shore, a boy’s voice met his thought, “Let go! I’ll throw” Childish laughter and wagging tail wrote a couplet of love and innocence as young human and ageless canine played on the beach.

He stepped into the ocean betting that solid land would welcome him.

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Whensday -the Wakefield Doctrine-

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Remind us to discuss the principle of ‘more words get you more words’, in the context of the practice of writing.

This is kinda a RePrint/placeholder. Tonight is post our Six Sentence Serial installment (over at Denise’s Six Sentence Story bloghop).

before that:

the Doctrine is for you, not them.

the way that we relate ourselfs to the world around us (and the people who make it up) is the heart of the Wakefield Doctrine

speaking of heart, we all know that rogers exist in a reality of emotion, right? welll add to that, the quality of atemporality, i.e. they are, in their world, freed from the chains of: ‘dude, that was six years ago, let it go.’  In a lesser dramatic manner, of the three predominant worldviews, one more prone to say, ‘what did you mean when you said that’ (being a student of the Doctrine, you will be the position to surpass on the ‘said what’ and go right to the ‘said when?’)

unlike pretty much all the other popular personality schemes, schedules, systems and insights, the Wakefield Doctrine is not a club-shaped mirror.

Barber of Seville? sure give us a minute to look it up and paste it here.

 

got it! (lol … sometime we surprise our ownselfs…. this post… the last line.)

Il Barbiere di Siviglia

(“La ran la le ra la ran la la.”)
Largo al factotum della città.
Presto a bottega, ché l’alba è già.
Ah, che bel vivere, che bel piacere
per un barbiere di qualità!

Ah, bravo Figaro!
Bravo, brayissimo;
fortunatissimo per verità!
Pronto a far tutto,
la notte e il giorno
sempre d’intorno,
in giro sta.

Miglior cuccagna per un barbiere,
vita più nobile, no, non si dà.
Rasori e pettini, lancette e forbici,
al mio comando tutto qui sta.

V’è la risorsa, poi, del mestiere
colla donnetta col cavaliere
Ah, che bel vivere, che bel piacere
per un barbiere di qualità!

Tutti mi chiedono, tutti mi vogliono,
donne, ragazzi, vecchi, fanciulle:
Qua la parrucca. Presto la barba
Qua la sanguigna. Presto il biglietto
Figaro … Figaro
Son qua, son qua.
Figaro… Figaro…
Eccomi qua.
Ahimè, che furia!
Ahimè, che folla!
Una alla volta, per carità!
Figaro su, Figaro giù
Pronto prontissimo son come il fulmine:
sono il factotum della città.
Ah, bravo Figaro!
Bravo, bravissimo;
a te fortuna non mancherà. ‘
(The above is from a Libretto from different source, if any Italian speaking Readers would Comment if above is even close to video lyrics)

I can explain!  Really, I can give you a rational basis for todays…Post?

Look, some Posts are well planned and (hopefully) well executed expositions of an idea or a theme, something that says, ‘we have all been thinking about… now that you mention it… since you asked, the answer to your question is…’ A Post that answers questions or provides valuable information.
The previous Post (‘…Pulled out of San Pedro late one night..’) is a perfect example of a rational and reasonable little Post.

Today’s Post….maybe not as much.
But hey, there was the (…when the moon hit your eye like a big pizza pie…) that was a little bit of the, (as roger might say)  ‘spontaneous conception.’ school of Post writing. And there have been other Posts that seem to show up in the morning, screaming like a chicken with it’s head cut off “…write about this…write about this!!” (Apologies to any PETA PALS, my sub-conscious apparently has managed to get an ‘outside line’, as we used to say in the day of rotary dial phones.)

But it is my Post and you are (my) Readers, so the least I can do is come up with some explanation as to why we are watching opera, lyrics in Italian, video with English sub-titles. Surely there is something in the path I followed this morning (to end up here) that will lend even the slightest patina of rationality.

No, no there isn’t.

So screw it. Here is how it all went down.
Minding my own business this morning and decided to listen to the ‘famous Barber of Seville song’. (There has got to be a secret ‘sons of Rossini’ sect out there planning to attack Warner Brothers and steal all the Looney Tune archives.  Bugs and Company having single-handedly destroyed most of this (and other reasonably enjoyable) opera by having Bugs or Elmer (in drag no doubt) doing an acceptable (to my 6 year old Saturday morning cartoon watching ears) rendition of this and other Great Music.

Anyway, not really a fan of opera, but this particular morning as I listened to (Figaro’s Aria), I could hear lyrics! Not just ‘figaro, figaro’. Sure, the lyrics have been there all along, but this time I heard them. This Figaro guy, he was telling a damn story!

And whatever, sub-conscious energy switch was thrown, I was stuck.
I mean, it was instant the hell with work! Find out more about the opera, find a video, do whatever has to be done so that I can to do Post all about this fine piece of music.

So, here you have it. Figaro’s Aria with libretto included.

And, yes  Figaro was totally a roger.

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TueJay -the Wakefield Doctrine-

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

So the computer we use 99 percent of the time is in the shop. We’ve brought our office laptop home to stand-in.

It is a perfectly acceptable substitute. Except for one thing: it has no letter ‘J’.

sibilant! minoris

(Now, alert rogerian Readers are going all Moonlight Sonata Third Movement on their computer keyboard about that last, next-to-last sentence.)

well, like we were all taught in catholic school, ‘That’s why god invented RePrints”

hey, that’s an idea! (no, not catholic school! RePr… ) Wait a minute! Surely we’ve written repeatedly on this topic, after all, why else would they call blogging, ‘the ill-grammared Language of Torment’?

let us go search the ever-ironic term ‘Sisters of Mercy’

Now, children! everyone find someone else and hold onto their hand

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine, class. If you pay attention, and listen closely, then at some time later in your life, much, much later, you will remember what you have learned here today. And when that time comes, you will say, (to your spouse, your friend, the police, your priest, the nurse or the man with the hearse)…”there was this place and there were these people and they told me about clarks, scotts and rogers and how it was so simple to understand other people if only I understood the Wakefield Doctrine! I see now that they were so very right…it is just sad that it is so very, very late for me…if only I had…written a Comment“!

Well, it’s not too late, binyons! You can participate, join in on the fun.  We are only a third of the way through the 90 Day Challenge, plenty of time to turn this bus around. Speaking of buses, lets make that the topic of today’s Post! (and the Wakefield Doctrine Lesson of the Day).

First Day of  School Trauma!

AlrightAll-right! I’ll go first…

… oddly enough, I have no memory of 1st grade but I do remember that my 2nd grade Teacher’s name was Mrs. Brennan. Starting with the 2nd grade I attended a parochial school  and for the most part all the Teachers at Our Lady of Mercy (who doesn’t hear James Brown, “mer-cey!!”)School were nuns. Real nuns, not just sallyfield-looking-hey-just-a-normal-girl-who-happens-to-be-a-nun, no sir! These were Nuns of the Order of the Sisters of Mercy. En regalia, full-dress nuns. For those unfamiliar with the look, we’re talking about white on black habits, with face and hands as the only clue that there is a human there, never mind a female human. Damn! (The borg look like nudists compared to the Sisters of Mercy back in the early 60s.)
(Back to my First Day of School Trauma). Arriving in class, the very first thing I learned from a classmate was,  “if you don’t eat all your lunch, they make you eat in front of the whole school and for the first day of school they always serve something called Welsh Rabbit”. I spent the entire morning of the first day of school in the Second Grade in fear of what would happen when I refused to eat the Welsh Rabbit. We are talking “worry” on a level such that I was so focused on trying to come up with a plan to avoid the lunchroom embarrassment, that I almost got sent back to the First Grade.I could not have spelled my own name when called on, cause I was busy! I had to think of something!  Sitting in one of those desks with the fliptop writing surface and the seat attached and the whole thing held together by a wrought-iron frame. Somehow I survived. I look back now, from the vantage point of the Wakefield Doctrine, can there be any doubt that there was a clark sitting in that totally uncomfortable seat in September, trying to figure his way out of spot that (he) was barely equipped to deal with.

( …Pero Principal Clarke, lo que Wakefield Lección Doctrina del Día vamos a tener de su historia muy interesante?… )

Why thank you, Miguel,  for that reminder. The Lesson of the Day is more an illustration of the clarklike personality. The reaction of the 8 year old clark in this story is that his response to a threat was to try and think of a plan to avoid the embarrassment that he perceived to be waiting for him at lunch (he really, really hated cheese). The saying at the Doctrine is: clarks think, scotts act and rogers feel.

 

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Mondya RePrah -the Wakefield Doctrine-

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

...out like a lion.

Wind is a funny thing. At the time of this typation, it is at elevated levels outside our window. Like naturally-hyperactive children, (you know, of the more benign ages of, say, fourth to sixth grade), it is rustling the pine forest around the house. Kinda cool, (stylistically and not termperaturistically), how, at this time of day, (before sunrise), the wind acquires the combined qualities of volition and location. You can hear it off in the distance, approach, only to veer away at the last second.

Totally kids. (Before they are fully assimilated by their respective,predominant worldviews.)

(Hokey Smoke! A topic without a RePrint!)

The Wakefield Doctrine is gender and age neutral…

This just in!!

Found A Post [stop] Don’t Remember Having Written It [stop] Don’t Deprive Them New Readers Out There!

ok, ok

here’s your little RePrint

‘and a thousand telephones, that will not ring’ the Wakefield Doctrine: the theory of personality predicated on three characteristic worldviews

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of personality that you get to enjoy with your friends and them, before it gets all famous and mainstreamy and everyone will know about it)

Question: If your husband is a roger and you are a clark, is it true that they never accept how much you have changed over the years, since you first met?
Answer: Too true1

(Welcome to ‘ya shoulda just asked Tuesday’! We will be presenting some common questions and the semi-comprehensive answers…along with a little commentary, mostly to let us get away with dividing the page into block quotes.’)

Question: My best friend is funny and fun to be with, but sometimes when we are around other people he gets like, mean even goes and picks on me. But this happens only with certain people, this big kid that (my friend) knows. What gives?

Answer: Chances are your friend is a scott and the person that, when they’re around, your friend starts acting mean?…well, that other person is a scott too, but they are what we call dominant (to your friend). So your friend, even though he is picking on you, doesn’t mean to hurt your friendship… it’s a pack2 thing, you know?
Answer: jeez, if you say so

(This question deals with the changing pack order (from the scottian perspective) and it’s effects on the behavior of a scott. Note: this question (and by implication, the experience cited), will most likely be posed by a clark. Do you know why that should be?)

Question: My fiancée and I are getting close to the Big Day. When we first got engaged, we both agreed to keep the ceremony and everything on the quiet, low-key side, but lately, ( the wedding is in 3 months), she has been talking more to her sisters and some of her old friends and it seems like the guest list is getting bigger and bigger. What gives?

Answer: She is probably a roger. Forget about changing her mind. It means a lot to her, in a way that you will never understand.  So relax! Sneak a couple of your friends that she might not have approved when the guest list was small, she probably won’t even notice now, and if she does make an issue of it, say the following to her (word for word): “I understand how important family is to you now. And even though I am not close to my family, you have shown me that my feelings3 of friendship with (fill in the names of you friends) make them like family. Won’t you let my family join your family …darling?

(And there are those who would say, ‘Hey Wakefield Doctrinaires! Sure you have a uniquely clever take on personality types, but what about practical applications? Huh, what about those?‘ Well, here ya go! Who cannot not identify with this situation? …not counting the rogers, of course!)

Question: My boss is nice enough, but it seems like he tries too hard to be, like my friend or something! Every day it is ‘how are you doing?’, “is there anything I can do to make your job easier?” I mean, all the time! I can’t get any work done when he is in the office, he is always offering to ‘help’! I might be able to deal with this, except that every time I do get some work done that he needs to sign off on, he always finds  fault! And if I come up with something on my own initiative (he likes to say that he wants me to try to ‘think outside the box’) he is either totally negative or acts like he is amazed that I actually did it myself!  Should I quite my job?
Answer: Probably.4

(This Question deals with a scenario that is all too common. And, although we do not propose that all bosses are rogers, we will say this, ‘If your boss is a scott you have: a) a good time everyday up until the day he decides that it is time to change careers or b) a lead pipe cinch of a sexual harassment lawsuit, so the day you get tired of her shenanigans, ‘it’s sayonara see ya in court’
If your boss is a clark, then we know the following: a) if your clarklike boss is female then her boss is a roger, if your clarklike boss is male then his boss is a scott!  and b) they (clarks) make great bosses, will stick up for you totally against all opponents, but jeez! enough with the leadership by consensus! Get a set, yo.

That music referenced in the Title of today’s Post? Totally weird. I’m sitting and watching TV and a commercial comes on and before I can hit ‘MUTE’ I hear the music in the background (of the commercial) and I’m off to the great and omnicient google… and here we are

1) rogers are about consistency, if they are about anything at all! The worldview of the herd (rogers) maintains that history, tradition, continuity…consistency is of the greatest good! The worldview is also one in which the individual’s relationship with the world-at-large manifests primarily in emotional terms. So when a (lasting) relationship forms, the details of ‘the other’ person are important, in a sense, manifesting the emotional investment. So, as time goes by, even though people change and grow and develop, the roger will still insist on seeing the ‘original person’

2) scotts, in the initial behavioral metaphor: like pack animals, i.e. wolves, dogs, lions and such. The social ranking in the pack is one of simple dominance, an alpha at ‘the top’ and everyone else in order of strength/prowess/capability downward from there. It is a primary characteristic of the scottian personality type to establish ranking when entering a new (social ) environment. Literally going from person to  person, figuratively pushing them on the shoulder in order to establish ranking

3) emotions! always play the emotion-card when dealing with rogers!

4) you could try to…nah, don’t even bother.  Maybe if you got to the Doctrine sooner, you might have learned enough to invoke your own rogerian aspect to re-configure your work relationship… but too hard, too frustrating, easier to get another job. But then again, most bosses/middle managers/supervisors/Principals are rogers!  so maybe you should be asking about the Wakefield Doctrine School of Self-Improving Oneself…school

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